Where next for brutalised Rudd?
Will Monday's vote solve Labor's leadership fight? Political writers talk about how the caucus meeting in Canberra will play out.
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If you'd hauled a semi-trailer load of fighting rum, a caravan of harlots and a boxing tent into a mining camp on payday, you'd hardly predict the level of crazed viciousness that has busted out in what's left of the heart of the Labor Party.
Kevin Rudd, conveniently in the air somewhere between Washington and damnation, had caused all the abomination by asking the one question guaranteed to drive a Labor MP witless these days: ''Wanna win an election against Tony Abbott?''
Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard. Photo: Reuters
Given that none of them could keep a straight face while answering ''yes, and we're going to win with Julia Gillard!'' the faithful felt it necessary to announce a lynch gang would be waiting when Rudd descended and then set about whipping themselves into a murderous mood.
Blood fairly seeped from their eyes when Rudd, just before boarding his jet, employed his dirtiest tactic. ''People power,'' he cried. ''Get on the phones and tell your local member and the media what you think.''
Who did Kevin Rudd think he was? Cory Aquino? Just because polls showed he was more popular than Ms Gillard didn't mean the people had a vote in caucus. He was backing anarchy because he knew he didn't have the numbers in Canberra.
Taking their cue from Rudd's fellow Nambour High School old boy Wayne Swan - who appeared to have lost all sense of control early, frothing at the mouth as he damned Rudd as a leaking, disloyal rotter - ministers and backbenchers lined up at the baseball-bat rental outlet.
Rudd's prime ministership had been chaotic, a bad joke, a dysfunction on wheels. He wouldn't listen to anybody, couldn't make a decision to save himself. He was a disaster.
No one explained how these attributes had been judged a suitable set of job skills for the job of foreign minister at a time when Australia was becoming more reliant on the rest of the world than almost any time previously. Why, hell, couldn't he have turned us into an international laughing stock?
Gillard herself, who appointed Rudd as Australia's flying diplomat, got into the fray, explaining how she watched Rudd's administration become paralysed, focused only on the next news cycle and the next picture opportunity. She had tried - oh, how she had tried - to pull things out of the soup, but in the end she had had no choice but to agree to do the job herself.
Now she wanted to settle the shemozzle. If she lost Monday's ballot, she'd step aside, never to lust for the prime ministership again. Rudd, she said, should pledge the same.
Fat chance. Alone above the Pacific, self-righteous vengeance in his heart - even though saying ''there is a place for civility'' in politics - Rudd wasn't even going to put his name into the hat until all the shouting was over. He would taunt until the end, and his campaign manager, Bruce Hawker, had already declared this was just the first round.
How are these people going to deal with the fighting rum hangover?
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